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CHAPTER 1

WINKEL’S CAVE

MAESTRO, VIRGINIA

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

RUTH WARNECKI PAUSED to consult her h she’d read it so many times it orn and stained from use, with a smear of strawberry jam on one corner Okay, she’d walked and crawled down this twisting passage exactly the 462 feet indicated on the map She’d measured it carefully, just as she’d measured all the distances since she clie at the end of the cavern’s entrance A narrow and twisty passage, sths of it so low she’d had to crab-walk, it had finally flattened out So far the distances had matched those on her map to the centimeter

At this point, there should have been a sht She focused her head laht feet up to the top of the cave wall then slowly scanned doard She didn’t see an arch or any sign there’d ever been one She went over the directions again to this point, rechecked the distances, but no, she hadn’t screwed that up Again, she shone her head lamp on the cave wall, moved back and forth at least three feet in both directions Nothing She was in the right spot, she knew it

Ruth rarely cursed when she was frustrated She hulide the pal inward here and there The as li over it Nothing but a solid cave wall

She was disappointed, but she knew that was a fact of life for a treasure hunter Her old uncle, Tobin Jones, a treasure hunter for fifty years, and so of a mentor to her, had told her that for every authentic treasure al aliens in California Of course that was because every fraudulent ht mark Problem is, Tobin had said with a shake of his head, we’re all suckers But that, he’d always believed, was better than those idiots traipsing over an e for nickels

Actually, she usedwith two hts Yes, she understood all about fake treasure maps, but she’d really been excited about this one All her research had led her to believe it could be the real deal Even the age of the paper, the ink, and thetested out—about 150 years old

But there was no arch She felt the crash of disappointain and kicked the cave wall There was always frustration, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been taken before There were the two fraudulent uys who’d sold them to her; they’d known she was a cop, the morons Then there was the Scotsman who sold her a map of a cave not a quarter of a mile west of Loch Ness She should have known better, but he was so char she’d believed him for one delicious moment

She shook her head Pay attention This old here, she intended to find it If there wasn’t an arch,years

Yeah, right She laughed at herself, an odd, creepy sound in the dense silence What an idiot The arch certainly could have collapsed, but it would remain visible Debris froer than tiically occur to fill it in from bottom to top so seamlessly

Only men could do that

She stepped back, lifted her head so her head lamp shone directly on the wall She studied every inch of it, pressing inith her fist everywhere she could reach Mr Weaver had told her this part of Winkel’s Cave had never been explored, h he appeared worried for her, he still had a glea any treasure she found

It was the feel of the cave, she thought, the way the silence felt, the hollow sound of her footsteps She was sure no one had been in this cave for a very long tiold was left here Mr Weaver had installed an iron grate to close off the entrance—fools injuring the him, he’d told her He couldn’t find the key, but that hadn’t mattered The lock had been child’s play to pick

Finally, she stepped back and hu, they did it re that looked out of place or staged She sat back against the opposite cave wall and retied one of her walking boots She realized she was tired She pulled out an energy bar, her favorite peanut butter, and slowly began to eat it, washing it doater fro, she raised her head to train her la to hate that frigging wall She began at the top, and slowly scanned all the way to the bottoain